More "miscellany" PART ONE (General)

by dhw, Saturday, November 26, 2022, 08:55 (489 days ago) @ David Turell

PART ONE

DAVID: Design theory accepts that calls are designed to produce all their functions by design. You give lip service to a theory you do not fully understand.

dhw: There are all kinds of design theories about all kinds of design. ... I am of course referring to the theory known as Intelligent Design, which is that living organisms are too complex to have arisen by chance, as should have been blindingly obvious from your bolded comment above. (newly bolded by dhw)

DAVID: That statement is a typical superficial description of ID without understanding the rest of it.

Your bolded comment was “we find mind-boggling complexity, which logically leads to recognizing the need for a designing mind”, which I have never disputed. However, if it is true that all ID-ers believe that 3.8 billion years ago their God preprogrammed - or always personally dabbled/dabbles - the whole of evolution plus all lifestyles, strategies, natural wonders etc., then of course I will restrict my support to the now bolded theory above.

Human evolution: specific DNA sequences

QUOTES: More switches were added to the human operating system as sequences developed into regulatory regions, and they were more finely tuned to adapt to environmental or developmental cues. By and large, those changes were advantageous to our species.

"They seem especially specific in causing genes to turn on, we think just in certain cell types at certain times of development, or even genes that turn on when the environment changes in some way," Lowe said. (dhw’s bolds)

dhw: Once again, we have cells changing in response to changing conditions. The context here is human, but the same would apply to the rest of the animal kingdom, and to plant life as well.

DAVID: Fully avoiding that DNA codes the reactions!!

How does that come to mean that the “reactions” precede the changes (your proposal)?

DAVID (under “bacterial motors”) As above, the DNA provided the responses and was available before the required responses appeared. DNA first, all responses second.

The DNA is part of the mechanism within the cell. Of course the mechanism for response is present before the cell responds to the environmental changes! But your theory has always been that your God changed organisms in anticipation of changes in conditions, and not in response to them. Or have you now quietly changed your mind?

Viruses fight bat immunity (dhw: And bats fight viruses’ immunity!)
Also Viruses fight with CRISPR

QUOTE: […] suggesting that over time, viruses evolved to counteract bats’ existing defense mechanisms, and bats evolved new-and-improved PKRs in response.

dhw: […] For me such examples simply reinforce the concept of a free-for-all. I just cannot imagine why your God would deliberately design each new mechanism of attack and defence – not just in this example, but throughout the whole living world. Why would he programme every move and countermove in the great battle for survival? It simply makes more sense to me that if He exists, he would have provided all life forms with the mechanism to do their own designing.

DAVID: ….as a designer it makes no sense to me to laboriously set up a mechanism of secondhand design

I don’t know when you last designed programmes for every innovation, lifestyle, strategy etc. throughout the past, present and future of life (or decided to dabble whenever your services were required), but I suspect you would have found it less “laborious” to design a single mechanism which would deal with all eventualities.

Bacterial intelligence: stress responses (Animals)

QUOTES: “… bacteria improve their estimation accuracy and make better informed decisions about how to respond to the environment. In other words, bacteria exploit a well-known principle in decision theory: the wisdom of crowds.

“…they deploy a variety of strategies to thrive in fluctuating environments. From relying on a hive mind, to hedging their bets like seasoned investors, or rapidly adapting by genetic mutation, bacteria seem to have figured out that the best way to cope with change is to play every possible trick in the book.

DAVID: Bacteria, as single cell, must have these abilities to survive. As they were the first life, they must have had them when they first appeared. Obviously designed this way.

As always, my thanks for your integrity in posting such an illuminating article, and giving it such an illuminating heading. Of course bacteria have these abilities to survive, and of course I accept the argument that such complexity suggests design. Every word seems to me to support the theory that single cells have the autonomous intelligence not only to fight their own battle for survival but also to pool their autonomous intelligences by forming communities. The process leads logically to all subsequent developments in evolution as intelligent cell communities deploy an almost unbounded “variety of strategies to thrive in fluctuating environments”.

Early Cambrian brains

DAVID: A brain is so complex, how did the first ones evolve? Design explains all.

I agree. And since so many articles emphasize how organisms RESPOND to changes in conditions, I would say Shapiro’s theory sounds a great deal more convincing than your own.


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